Love and Hip Hop apparently focuses on the women in the music industry and their roles and relationships. The first episode of the first season examines what the show offers audiences as a new and unseen look into Black culture and life.
Actors of Black casted shows or films are usually held accountable for the depictions they portray to [white] audiences and they are seen as representing the entire Black community; since this show was about Hip Hop, rappers in particular, and starred African Americans, this as an opportunity to analyze the representations of African Americans in Hip Hop that are produced for mass consumption to a large audience base of not just Black audiences.
Cultural voyeurism is the best way to describe how audiences, particularly white audience members. The “presumption is that members of the dominant group utilize the voyeuristic gaze to consume, understand or authentic images”.[7] Their opinions about African Americans are informed by the behavior of those in media, like the actors on Love and Hip Hop. Non-Black audiences use shows like, the first episode of, Love and Hip Hop as a space to examine and understand the dynamics of Black relationships through cultural voyeurism which problematizes Black authenticity because the lives demonstrated on this show cannot represent all Black people’s experiences.
The show has such a masculine ethos that I thought it was more so about the men and their relationships to women in the industry. The show was apparently supposed to be originally titled “Diary of a Hip Hop Girlfriend”[1]and that would have been more succinct to the message they were trying to get across.[2] If trying to make it about women apart of the rap game, why not just chose women who are in the game themselves instead of making their partners the prominent figures and how they deal with their “larger-than-life partners”.[3]
“Within rap discourse, there is a critique of monolithic depictions of both race and class”.[4] Love and Hip Hop is a medium that shows both different and stereotypical representations of African Americans. All the character’s lives have an emphasis on making money and becoming rich. So much so that you sometimes forget that these are upper class African Americans. They talk about making money like they don’t have any. “In their partial reflection of bourgeois values…offer ‘a status for subordinate groups that blurs distinctions between themselves and their oppressors”.[5] Through Love and Hip Hop, audiences get to see rich Black men and women tear each other down or disrespect one another. It is a double edged sword to see people who look like me on television but their primary focus is on money, not necessarily their careers or passions, disrespecting one another and those around them. Actors on the show are on the show for ratings, virtually promoting their personas as a selling point for more audience members to watch. There are “deep connections of hip-hop and commodity culture throughout the genre’s existence”.[6]
The representations of the men and women are stereotypical depictions of African Americans. “Cultural voyeurism is a fascination with the exotic nature of a group different from oneself, but added to that fascination is a sense of superiority on the part of the observer”.[8] They perpetuate negative portrayals of the men as hustlers, irresponsible and uncommitted fathers and partners and the women as pugnacious, loud and materialistic. Their association with men essentially being the reason they have a show also demonstrates the need for men for these women to be successful, loved or to be able to maintain the lifestyles they live.
The “pursuit of status through commodity consumption” can be a “detrimental form of compensation for black humiliation, exploitation, and degradation”.[9]
In the first episode, Chrissy picks a fight with Somaya for essentially working with her boyfriend.
They are at the same club and once Chrissy realizes who Somaya is she starts to make comments about her music (which she has not heard up to this point), talks about her appearance (teeth specifically), her outfit (shoes and that she does not feel threatened or insecure in anyway by Somaya’s presence. Somaya’s body is also referenced as a selling point to supplement her music by herself and Jim Jones when she meets with Jones in the studio to ask if they could do a track together. Jones replies to her that they can work something out and she has to be committed to being to “sell, sell, sell”.[10] This scene is followed by a clip of Somaya appreciating the curves of her body stating, “I’m glad I got curves, booty…”.[11] Demonstrating that when he sells you have to be able sell, it includes her body.
The episode/show opens up with a woman’s voice over and clips from different music videos with rappers and video models in each scene. The voice over explains that the show is supposed to be about women in Hip Hop. With that they go on to show the women who they will be following for the season and each can be labeled, either: The girlfriend, The baby mama, The One hit Wonder and The Up & Coming Artist. The opening credits first shows a blinged out heart which is shattered by a cell phone. Then thrown money and champagne glasses fill the background as each woman is shown. The women introduce themselves in association with their male partners. Olivia is dating a professional football player, Chrissy is dating Jim Jones, Emily has a child with rapper Fabolous (she’s also his stylist) and Mishonda is the ex-wife to rapper and producer Swiss Beatz. “The commodification of black dysfunction, both real and imagined, is a centerpiece in this nostalgia…Because of precarious economic conditions; African Americans are often forced to be complicit in their own demonization by producing commercially viable caricatures of themselves”.[12] Chrissy and Jim Jones both describe Jones as a rapper, business man and hustler meaning he makes “‘it’ happen for his family”, he is “bought his paper” and that “he goes hard”(VH1). “This masculinist ethos resonates with the traditional associations of black musicians with pimps and hustlers”.[13] Chrissy’s long term boyfriend is introduced to the show when hosting a stripper boxing match. When Chrissy arrives she’s pugnacious and gets in an argument with a woman in the audience and is asked to chill by Jones.
“Rap music has the potential to foment new collective identities, re-shuffle identities and produce new ‘others’ and alliances”[14]. Love and Hip Hop could have been a progressive show that showed Black women in a male-dominated industry working towards their aspirations, be it creating a family, success in business or both. However with the representations perpetuated on the current fourth season and two different locations, New York and Atlanta, it has yet to show audiences different new and innovative scripts of [rich] Black men and women apart of hip hop culture. Until then I will continue to struggle in if I should watch it just because it has Black people in it or not to because of the depictions these men and women portray…
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[1] The Futon Critic , “Breaking News-VH1 Amplifies Its Original Programming Development to Debut a Record 44 series in 2010.” Last modified April 10, 2010. Accessed January 31, 2014. http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news/2010/04/19/vh1-amplifies-its-original-programming-development-to-debut-a-record-44-series-in-2010-35351/20100419vh101/.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Jennifer Lena, “Voyeurism and Resistance in Rap Music Videos,” chap. 31 in That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop studies Reader, ed. Murray Forman & Mark Anthony Neal (New York, New York : Routledge, 2012).
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Marilyn Scott, (Definition of cultural voyeurism ), interview by Maya Simpkins, Email January 31, 2014.
[9] Jennifer Lena, “Voyeurism and Resistance in Rap Music Videos,” chap. 31 in That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop studies Reader, ed. Murray Forman & Mark Anthony Neal (New York, New York : Routledge, 2012).
[10] VH1., “Love and Hip Hop ,” Episode of Love and Hip Hop , Web.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Jennifer Lena, “Voyeurism and Resistance in Rap Music Videos,” chap. 31 in That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop studies Reader, ed. Murray Forman & Mark Anthony Neal (New York, New York : Routledge, 2012).
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
Work Cited
The Futon Critic , “Breaking News-VH1 Amplifies Its Original Programming Development to Debut a Record 44 series in 2010.” Last modified April 10, 2010. Accessed January 31, 2014. http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news/2010/04/19/vh1-amplifies-its-original-programming-development-to-debut-a-record-44-series-in-2010-35351/20100419vh101/.
Lena, Jennifer . Voyeurism and Resistance in Rap Music Videos. That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop studies Reader. Edited by Murray Forman & Mark Anthony Neal . New York, New York : Routledge, 2012.
Scott, Marilyn . January 31, 2014.
VH1.. “Love and Hip Hop ” Recorded March 14 2011. VH1 series. Web
Understanding Ignorance: The Contradictions of HH 